Daily Digest

Daily Digest

Mar. 10, 2014

THE FOUNDATION

“What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments. It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.” –John Dickinson, Letters of Fabius, 1788

TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS

Malaysian Mystery

A Malaysian Air flight disappeared over the South China Sea over the weekend en route from Malaysia to Beijing. Little sign of the aircraft or its 239 passengers has been found. The only clue of something amiss is that two passengers who booked the flight at the same time boarded using stolen passports. But there has been no declaration of a terrorist attack by any group.

Keep It Even if It’s ‘Not Very Good’

For those Americans too dumb to understand all the good Barack Obama has done for them through ObamaCare, he deigned to explain the benefit of his latest delay1. “There are some people who have very bad insurance, but they don’t know it because they don’t understand the fine print. We said, ‘You know what, you’re right. You should be able to keep the health insurance you have even if it’s not very good. Even if you could get insurance on HealthCare.gov, you should be able to keep it.’ And that’s the part of the law we’ve extended.” Gee, thanks for your benevolence. Democrats just happen to benefit since voters won’t have plans cancelled right before the election.

Everything Is Awesome

“I am absolutely confident that you will see millions of people benefitting from this law,” Barack Obama boasted of ObamaCare. “It is working the way it should.” There are so many ways to prove that wrong, from the colossal disaster of Healthcare.gov to the fact that the administration isn’t even tracking how many uninsured people sign up2. But the best rebuttal to that claim is the president’s own unilateral delays of provision after provision of his monstrosity. If it’s “working the way it should,” why are those delays necessary?

ObamaCare and ‘Income Inequality’

Not every Democrat constituency is happy about ObamaCare. Unite Here, a 300,000 member union of low-wage hospitality workers, says, “Without smart fixes, the ACA threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours, and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage.” In fact, one of Barack Obama’s central talking points – “income inequality” – will continue to increase due to his health care law. Union head Donald “D.” Taylor didn’t pull any punches, saying, “Unite Here was the first union to endorse then-Senator Obama. We support the addition of health care to millions of Americans. Yet facts are facts, and Obamacare will cost our members the equivalent of a significant pay cut to keep their hard-won benefits.” Not to worry though; as Obama says, “It is working the way it should.”

Obama Can’t Spell ‘Respect’

The president explained what R-E-S-P-E-C-T means, but he forgot how to spell it3. “When Aretha [Franklin] first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T [sic] meant to her, she had no idea it would become a rallying cry for African Americans, and women, and then everyone who felt marginalized because of what they looked like or who they loved. They wanted some respect.” Not only can’t he spell the word, but he also doesn’t earn it or give it.

RIGHT ANALYSIS

CPAC 2014 Highlights: Making the Case for Liberty

The American Conservative Union hosted the Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC, this past weekend. Here are some highlights from the roster of speakers, in no particular order:

Rand Paul: “Imagine with me for a moment, imagine a time when Liberty is again spread from coast to coast. Imagine a time when our great country is again governed by the Constitution. Imagine a time when the White House is once again occupied by a friend of Liberty. You may think I’m talking about electing Republicans. I’m not. I’m talking about electing lovers of Liberty. It isn’t good enough to pick the lesser of two evils. We must elect men and women of principle, and conviction and action, who will lead us back to greatness. There is a great and tumultuous battle underway for the future, not of the Republican Party but the future of the entire country.”

Rick Perry: “It’s time for a little rebellion on the battlefield of ideas. … I am here today to say, we don’t have to accept recent history. We just need to change the presidency. It’s not too late for America to lead in the world, but it starts by leading at home.”

Bobby Jindal: “I spent a lot of 2012 going around the country saying that President Obama was the most liberal and most incompetent president in my lifetime ever since Jimmy Carter. Now having witnessed the events abroad these last several days: To President Carter, I want to issue a sincere apology. It is no longer fair to say he was the worst president of this great country in my lifetime, President Obama has proven me wrong.”

Mike Lee: “We have concrete, specific proposals to help lower-income families overcome welfare, improve education and job training, and rescue at-risk communities with too few jobs, too few fathers, and too little hope. We have solutions to end cronyist privilege and corporate welfare, to close the Beltway Favor Bank, and put America’s political and corporate elites back to work for the rest of us. And we have introduced legislation to rescue America’s working families from the middle class squeeze. To make it more affordable to raise and educate their kids, and afford health insurance and a home of their own. We have an agenda. And contrary to the Establishment’s advice, we’re not hiding it from the media or the American people, or from you. It’s time for the Republican Party to stop talking about Ronald Reagan and start acting like him.”

Ted Cruz: “You want to lose elections, stand for nothing. … Defend the Constitution – all of it. … We need to repeal every single word of ObamaCare.”

John Bolton: “Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama. This is a president that does not believe in American exceptionalism, a president uninterested in national security and America’s place in the world, who considers our strength part of the problem, that we are the cause of international tension. This is like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. But that is Barack Obama’s world.”

Marco Rubio: “There is only one nation on earth capable of rallying and bringing together the free people on this planet to stand up to the spread of totalitarianism. … America must be involved in leading the world.”

Dr. Ben Carson: “[W]e have got to get back to the same mentality that Americans had in the pre- Revolutionary days. They got together with their friends and their neighbors and their associates and they talked about what kind of America do we want to have, what we want to pass onto our children. And they encouraged each other, and that is how a bunch of ragtag militia men defeated the most powerful army in the world at that time. You need to go out and talk to people.”

Sarah Palin: “I love coming back here because there are always so many young people, or as you’re known by the folks across the river, the ObamaCare suckers. … Turns out you have the change they were waiting for – you have the fives, the tens, the twenties.”

Profiles of Valor: Marine Cpl. Kyle Carpenter

“William Kyle Carpenter, a Marine Corps veteran who was severely wounded during a November 2010 grenade attack in Afghanistan, will receive the nation’s highest combat valor award later this year,” reports the Marine Corps Times6, though the White House hasn’t officially announced the award. Carpenter is now medically retired as a corporal, having sustained horrific injuries as a result of his heroic actions.

While serving in the Marjah district of Afghanistan in 2010, Carpenter and his good friend, Lance Cpl. Nicholas Eufrazio, were standing guard on a rooftop when a grenade landed near them. What happened next isn’t entirely clear since there were no witnesses besides the two men, and Carpenter couldn’t remember what happened while Eufrazio sustained brain damage that until nearly two years later rendered him mute. However, the Times reports, “Hospitalman 3rd Class Christopher Frend, who triaged the injuries of Carpenter and Eufrazio, said the injuries Carpenter sustained, and the evidence at the scene indicated that he [Carpenter] had indeed covered the explosive. The blast seat of the grenade – the point of its detonation – was found under Carpenter’s torso.” Marine Staff Sgt. Michael Kroll, Carpenter’s platoon sergeant, said, “our feeling has always been that Kyle shielded Nick from that blast.”

Carpenter lost his right eye and most of his teeth, and the blast shattered his arm and his jaw. His scared face will be a lasting reminder of the price he paid to save a friend. But he says, “I’m still here and kicking and, you know, I have all my limbs so you’ll never hear me complain.” He even ran the Marine Corps Marathon last year and posted a time of 4:28:42. Carpenter’s medal will be the third awarded to a Marine for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Columnist Peggy Noonan: “What a small and politically vicious man New York’s new mayor is. Bill de Blasio doesn’t like charter schools. … Last year 82% of its students passed citywide math exams. Citywide the figure was 30%. … Charter schools may help the poor and those just starting out in America, they may give options to kids who’ve floundered elsewhere, but a lot of them are supported by rich people. There is a ‘strong private-sector element’ in their funding, he said. … They should be thanked for this, every day. Again, they do it because they care about children who would otherwise be locked into a public-school system that doesn’t work. … When a man says he will raise taxes to achieve a program like pre-K education, and is quickly informed that that program can be achieved without raising taxes, and his answer is that he wants to raise taxes anyway, that man is an ideologue. And ideologues will sacrifice anything to their ideology. Even children.”

Columnist George Will: “The idea that politicians should write laws restricting people critical of them is as perverse as the idea that the sprawling, opaque IRS bureaucracy should be assigned to construe and apply such laws. It is bad enough that there is the misbegotten Federal Election Commission to do what the First Amendment forbids – government regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political speech. This column has previously noted that in 1996 a Republican Senate candidate called the FEC to dispute campaign finance charges made by Democrats. The head of the FEC’s enforcement division told the Republican: ‘Promise me you will never run for office again, and we will drop this case.’ So spoke Lois Lerner. There almost certainly are people, above her and beyond the IRS, who initiated or approved the IRS’ punitive targeting of conservative groups, and who hope Lerner’s history of aggressive partisanship will cause investigators to conclude that she is as high as responsibility for the targeting rises. Those people should hire criminal defense attorneys.”

The Gipper: “Government has an important role in helping develop a country’s economic foundation. But the critical test is whether government is genuinely working to liberate individuals by creating incentives to work, save, invest, and succeed.”

Columnist John C. Goodman: “There were about 450 students in my high school graduating class. … If we were to have an expensive reunion that couldn’t be paid for with normal fees, I’m sure that those who have more would chip in and underwrite the expense. But that would be voluntary and everyone would expect it to be voluntary. … Our basic notions of what is fair and unfair and which problems need correcting and which ones don’t are actually very similar when we are talking about people we all know. It is only when we are talking about abstractions and amorphous groups of people – people that we don’t know – that political ideologies pull us apart.”

Comedian Conan O’Brien: “The White House announced a change to Obamacare. They keep making adjustments. They say people can now keep their insurance plans for two more years. When asked what would happen after two years, Obama said, ‘After two years, I don’t give a da–.’”